Rose Bowl 2018 live

Two teams from the same conference had never made the College Football Playoff in the same year before Georgia and Alabama this year.

It’s no surprise, really, that the S.E.C. was the first conference in the short history of the Playoff to achieve that feat. The S.E.C. has sent a representative—the Crimson Tide—to two of the three title games staged so far in the playoff era. This year, Georgia came to the party too. The Bulldogs easily handled Auburn—who beat Alabama the week before—in the SEC Championship Game.

That gained the number-three-ranked Bulldogs a place in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on January 1. Lying in wait are the second-ranked Oklahoma Sooners, who wrapped up the Big 12 against T.C.U. on December 12. The Playoff era hasn’t been kind to the Big 12. No team from that conference has ever won a Playoff game, though with Heisman winner Baker Mayfield at the controls the Sooners enter the semifinal as slight favorites to knock off Georgia and right that strange quirk of college football history